Thursday, February 14, 2013

The Government Accountability Office has added two big government operations to its latest "high risk list" for being vulnerable for waste, fraud, abuse, inefficiency and mismanagement.

The first is the government's overall management of programs that deal with possible climate change problems, such as the federal flood and crop insurance programs and direct damage to federal property. It also is concerned about disaster relief programs, which spent more than $100 billion in recent years including FEMA ($80 billion 2004-2011) and emergency spending, such as the $50 Sandy relief bill. Add in Katrina relief and you get billions more.

I was amused by Weintrobe's accusation about GWPF's nefarious intent...

GWPF’s aim is primarily to sew doubt on the findings of mainstream climate science.

...which conjures up lovely illusions of Lawson and Peiser stitching away furiously with blankets over their knees and cups of tea by their sides. It's not exactly how I imagined the great oil-funded conspiracy though.

Whether or not climate change is a real problem, the compact between politics and the academy as is proposed by the article plainly aims to position science as a remedy to extant political problems. No good can possibly come of it.

Cross-breeding wildlife is not new. But human-induced changes such as global warming, development and the introduction of non-native creatures are bringing together previously separated species. While there are no baseline studies to show there are more hybrids than nature intended, anecdotal evidence is mounting...."Management-wise, it certainly causes a problem," said Charlotte Lindqvist, an evolutionary biologist at the State University of New York, Buffalo. "What should we do with these hybrids? Should we shoot them? Should we preserve them? We need to know more about their impact."